by Jenna Rhodes
She let Sevryn reach out again, to guide her over the trampled bank to virgin ground upstream, talking to him with half her attention and listening for the seductive voice of the oily stain as she walked. “Would it be wise to return?”
“I believe so, for a day or two. They are grateful if wary. I didn’t see any bird keepers, so any communication would likely be by sea and take a while longer. They like their isolation from what I gather.”
“Independent.”
“Exactly. They are beholden only to the sea for whatever bounty it gives them, and it exacts its toll from them.”
“How does the land feel to you? The sea?”
Sevryn tilted his head for a moment’s thought. “If I had to characterize it, I would say old. It feels old and worn.”
“But not comfortable.”
“Not at all. Why do you ask?”
“Because it struck me that way, too. While the lands of the First Home are raw, new, primal, this world feels different to me. As if it has been beaten down by circumstance and weather—and man. Strange to think of a place like that.”
“You’ve not seen most of the ruins of the Mageborn, or you wouldn’t say that.”
“And you have?”
“Gilgarran was a most thorough teacher and mentor. Also, he held a curiosity that some said was unhealthy about the pools of sorcery left behind in the badlands.”
“The contaminants.”
“Yes. Still viable even after centuries, but in a most unpredictable and often virulent way. I almost lost a foot accidentally stepping in an unseen pool.”
“Almost.”
“I did,” he said sorrowfully, “lose a very well-made and practically new boot.”
Her head whipped about. “Speaking of contamination.”
“Here?”
She winced. “It shouts at me. But . . .” and she dropped to her knees. “I don’t think it’s placed deep in the creek. In fact, it feels like it’s just tucked in about . . .” She had her arm in, fishing around the bank and finding a water-carved overhang. “Just about here.” She pulled her fist out, fingers curled over a pulsating bit of yellow-green that radiated the venom it produced. It squirmed and pulsed against her hold, flaring out between her fingers so much that she narrowed her eyes to a slit to look at it.
“You’re not going to bind that to you.”
“Cage it tightly is more like it, and yes. I don’t have a choice right now until I find a safe way to destroy it.” Eyes still near shut, she quickly wove a bit of her soul into a tight thread that she wrapped about it like a spider would cocoon a prey and hooked it onto her as she did her other anchored threads. She could feel the two minuscule bits of evil rotate toward each other and buzz in mild irritation when her thread kept them from merging.
“You’re frowning.”
“I can’t let them merge.”
“The first bit to the second? I should think not.” He leaned over to brush stems and damp dirt from her knees. “Can you identify the soul?”
“Not yet, and there’s a strong part of me that never wants to know whose soul it is.”
“A wise reaction, but an unlikely outcome.” His hands ringed her calf for a moment. “Is it mortal?”
“The soul?”
“Yes. Or could it be a demon, like Cerat?”
She chewed on the corner of her lip thoughtfully. “My anchors are souls. But at the other end . . . Narskap and Quendius use Cerat. They offer a dying man a pinch of Cerat in exchange for their true soul, and their Undead are the ones who accepted.”
“But you . . .”
“A pinch of myself. Life. And their life.”
He stood. “Why?”
“A chance to keep them from the abyss. There is an abyss out there, I saw it, if only briefly. It wasn’t for me, but it waits for a number of us, don’t you think? And even though death doesn’t frighten me, being there alone does. So when their death approaches, I can save them from that brink, I think.”
“You don’t know what will happen if you retrieve those anchors you set.”
“No. I don’t. Narskap had a vision and was instructing me step by step, and we . . . we didn’t get a chance to talk about his final purpose.”
His lips thinned. “He talked you into using your own soul. How could he have asked this of you? His only daughter.”
“He had none of his own to give.”
“Grace, you gave bits of yourself away. I don’t know if, we don’t know, how the soul heals. If it’s infinite or like a biscuit with only so many crumbs to be had from it. He made you deal with Cerat, and we both know what that demon is capable of, and if Cerat realizes that you’re at the other end of those strings—”
“He won’t.” She added, “I don’t even know if the demon thinks or can rationalize as we do, or if it just exists.”
Sevryn fell silent and she could not follow his thoughts, but saw the lines deepen at the corners of his eyes and downward along his mouth. “But you don’t understand what it is you’re dealing with here,” and he gestured at the new threads she’d added.
“I know.” She ruffled his hair with her fingers. “What if it’s not a demon? What if it’s Trevilara?”
“Then we’ll know the songs they sang of her for centuries are wrong.”
“One of the few things remembered from the exile, and it’s wrong.” She echoed the irony.
He offered her his arm as he straightened. “If we’re lucky, if we succeed here, they’ll never have to know.” He put his face to the wind for a moment. “We should make it back to a sturdy roof or two before the evening drizzle hits us.”
“Rain is coming?”
His eyebrow lifted. “What? You can’t feel it?”
“At this point, everything feels damp.” She leaned slightly against him as they began the long walk back.
“You need to take that up with your inner Goddess,” he told her, his breath tickling the top of her head.
“I will.”
It rained for an evening, and then came two fair days when no one stayed inside and the well water was tested with great caution. Then celebration was followed by work, and even Rivergrace spent a good part of a day helping to mend nets. When she took a break, she did so at the meadow’s edge where a girl with tousled hair and blue eyes that spoke with vibrant laughter sat down next to her and busily picked a lap of wild flowers to braid into a chain.
Rivergrace had found some herbs which, as described by three or four of the village women, were good for basic healing arts and sat preparing them to take with her. She was more tired than the cleansing should have left her, and the hard work hadn’t helped, so she rested when Sevryn couldn’t see her and worry about her. The two of them worked in comfortable silence for a short span until the girl spoke.
“Mama says you’re high Vaelinar.”
“Oh?” Grace tried to smile, felt the expression slipping away too quickly in her exhaustion. “And you are not?” Did she mean royalty and common?
“No. Our powers are small, compared to yours. Even our whole village couldn’t have cleaned our well and the waters that feed into it. We tried once or twice. Our elder died trying.”
“That’s . . . that’s awful.”
“It’s life.” Her small hands paused in the twisting of her flower stems before her nimble fingers quickly righted the braiding and then finished with a triumphant twist before shoving the flower crown at Rivergrace. “It’s for you. A thank you.”
“Oh! And, thank you.” Rivergrace took the crown, doubled it and put it on as a bracelet rather than the crown.
“Mama says we should thank those we can while we can. Not to wait.”
“She’s very wise.”
Her companion’s dimpled chin bobbed in agreement. Her gaze, which had been fixed on her flowers, looked up now. Prett
y Vaelinar eyes, of that blazing blue with tiny sparks of green. She ought to have the power that accompanied her bloodline, Grace thought.
“I’m Hobina.”
“Rivergrace.”
“I know.” The girl paused for a long moment. “When are you becoming a God?”
She couldn’t have heard right. The language she heard here was so different from what she learned at home, a blurred version, she often had trouble following. “A . . . what?”
“A God. That’s what Queen Trevilara is going to be.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think she will be a black, awful Goddess, but my mama says she wants power.”
“Does everyone become Gods?”
“Oh, no. Only the special ones, even among the high ones.” She peered up at Rivergrace from under her bangs, the late afternoon light catching the sparks in her eyes. She put up her little finger. “Most of us only have this much Talent. The High have this,” and she put up her whole hand, fingers wiggling. “Queen Trevilara and you probably have this much.” And she put up both her hands, fingers extended widely. “But I won’t tell anyone.”
“And why not?”
She pushed her hair from her face and stared right into Grace. “Because she’ll come and kill you if she hears about you. The others said so.”
Rivergrace felt the corner of her mouth draw upward. “She may try,” Grace told her young admirer. “But she won’t be able to do it.”
“Good,” the girl said firmly. “That’s good.”
She bent closer to Hobina. “And do the others talk about how one becomes a God?”
“They rise on the power we give them. But most of them take it, Mama says.”
“And your mother would be . . . Zytropa.”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“You look much like her.”
Hobina dropped her gaze to her lap as she prepared another chain of wild flowers. “Not yet,” she allowed. “But maybe someday. Mama says those who would be Gods put their hooks into us and never let go. They ride on our backs.”
“Ride on your backs?”
Hobina nodded firmly. “We let them chain us and give our powers to them.”
Rivergrace sat back on one hip, remembering the cage of threads like and yet unlike hers, tightly woven and too numerous to count spun about the Vaelinar Gods. Mortals, who made themselves immortal? Gods who were not Gods but whose powers were stolen? If so, then they would have much more trouble confronting Trevilara than they’d hoped, for every so-called Vaelinar God would be allied against them, in self-defense. They could sap the strength of an entire people to feed themselves.
On the other hand, Sevryn might be a bit happier knowing all they faced were mortals, or those who had been, once. Gods were not killable. Mere mortals were, even though pretending to Godhood. That might cheer him considerably.
But thinking that did not warm the cold spot of fear which had begun to form inside her chest.
Whatever steps they took from here on would have to be carefully planned and well-guarded. And they had to keep Quendius from crossing paths with Trevilara, at all costs.
Hobina put her grass-stained fingers on Rivergrace’s knee. “You look very pale. Are you all right? You’re not poisoned, are you?”
“No.” Rivergrace found a small smile. “I will be fine.”
A long shadow fell across them as Sevryn approached. Hobina’s eyes narrowed with worry, and she got up to skitter away after a stammered good-bye. Sevryn watched her coltish figure run from them.
“You’re too like the authority, I think,” Rivergrace told him as he frowned and squatted down next to her.
“Do you think?”
“I do. You’ve the discipline and self-reserve. I don’t know what Trevilara has done to this village; no one will talk to me yet, but I am beginning to form an idea.”
“Then let me drop some more information on you.” He paused to pluck an herbal stem from the ground and sniff it. He dropped it in Rivergrace’s lap. “I think that might help stem bleeding,” he mentioned. “I’ve run across something like that the Kobrir use.”
“Perfect. I’ll test it, of course, but I could use that in my simples kit. What did you find?”
“This was more than a plain fishing village. What we see here,” and his hand swept across the landscape, “is a quarter of what used to lie here. I found massive outbuildings that were burned down, and the stubs of dry dock cradles down at the harbor.”
“Boat builders?”
“So it seems, and once very good ones. Their past is a memory from their grandparents’ time and they don’t willingly reveal it. Trevilara brought a punishment of fire down on their heads for it.” He sat back on his heels.
“For building?”
“For crafting vessels that enabled cities to escape her hold.”
“Ahhh.” Rivergrace twisted a bundle together and dropped it in a pocket, the scent of fresh greenery, bruised by her fingers, filling the air. “The women are saying little of her, but Hobina,” and she nodded after her departed companion, “talks of a two-caste system. The higher tier holds the magic, and the power, and the longevity, from what I can glean. There is a deep-seated fear and respect, but I’m not sure if we can count on a rebellion.”
“We haven’t time to build one, anyway.” He picked up a handful of pickings and spread them across his palm to examine them. “What are these good for?”
“Headache, toothache, I’m told.”
“Eaten?”
Rivergrace grinned at him. “I’ve seen few topical cures for those.” She laughed as he tossed the gleanings at her.
His own white teeth flashed. “That would be a sight, wouldn’t it? A green paste spread across the brow or cheeks for pain.”
She gathered the cuttings back up again, her fingers nimbly catching them up and twisting them into a bundle, long-stemmed buds with showy white-and-blue pods. “More like they would crush to a bluish goo, but since they’re dried and put in a tisane, I’m not likely to know.” She pocketed her flowers.
“What do we do?”
“We gather whatever they want to give us for payment and move on—and move quickly. They fear another fire-hazing that will destroy what the last one did not, and I don’t think we’re safe here for more than another day or two. Their gratitude will be greatly strained by then. Our main advantage now is that they’re not in communication with any local government seat, let alone Trevilara’s throne, so they’ve no one spying on them and they’re not spying back. But—” And he paused. “That’s not to say they wouldn’t give us up willingly, especially if they stood to regain some of their old favor. There’s plenty of lumber here to go back into the old business. They long for the security that will give them.”
“Then we won’t stay.”
“Tomorrow?”
She got to her feet and brushed the last few stems and leaves off her skirt. “Early, I think.”
“Yes, and I think we will leave in one direction and double back, in case anyone thinks to mark our trail.”
“Meaning you’re not sure about spies.”
“In this world,” and he stood to join her, his lips brushing her ear, “I’m not certain of anything except you.”
Chapter
Eight
“I FEEL LIKE I CAN SEE forever from here,” Rivergrace murmured. She laced her fingers together about her knees as she sat and felt the early morning wind tease her hair about her shoulders.
Her attention darted to Sevryn and then back to the harbors in the shore below their cliffside perch. “I don’t wonder. Look at them, like a many-fingered hand of the sea stabbing into the land, demanding to be noticed.”
“I am thinking of Tranta.”
“We would, with the sea in his blood and his hair the color of a warm tide pool. He never quite seems of the earth, does he? Those har
bors—they’re naturals, all of them, and it’s no wonder we saw a fleet of fishing boats take to the tide at dawn.” He dropped down to sit next to her. He brushed the aura that surrounded her lightly, and the touch against the barely seen yet tangible cage of gold-and-black threads sent a buzzing tingle over him. He leaned slightly away to avoid that touch again. “And, yes, Tranta would have loved seeing this. I think he would have talked me into stealing a sailboat with him and going out for a season, if he didn’t think he’d have to convince you first.”
“I think if he’d gotten out on a wild sea, he’d never come back. The desire is too strong in him.”
“The Jewel of Tomarq was his anchor. When Quendius shattered her, he almost went to pieces as well, but he made smaller, just as potent, sentinels out of her shards. He made light armor for Lara, pieces of the Jewel inlaid in it, and that’s what destroyed Alton when he tried to kill her. I saw their flare immolate him. I felt their heat.” Sevryn shook his head in memory. “Tranta is determined not to let his Jewel go. She is a Way that was broken and yet still exists.”
“What do you suppose he’s doing now?”
Sevryn pulled at some of the tall sea-reeds that grew at the cliff’s edge and examined them, as if deciding whether to eat them or weave. “It’s hard to tell,” he answered, as his fingers decided to braid the flat-leaved stems. “Time passes differently here, we know that much. Daravan’s sorcery which sent us blasting to Kerith happened but a century or two ago here—and more than a thousand years ago on Kerith. We have to be mindful of that. As for Tranta, he could be married with children or still fastening his gems into watch-posts, hoping to extend the Jewel’s Way. Time could snap into place with us here. We’ve no way of telling.”
“It’s like when I escaped the mines and forge of Quendius, cast out on the raft in the flood, and the Goddess caught me up. She wove us together to save me. Time passed and I never knew it.”
“Possibly. Yet time passes everywhere.”
“Nutmeg’s child is born.”
“Now that, I would bet upon. She could hardly have grown much more pregnant.”